by Andreas Schölzel, Guest author of € uro on SundayA party slogan announces "Education must not cost anything. Except some effort". But! Education has to cost a lot and education is very special. The only question is: Who pays?
In our knowledge economics it would be negligent if access to education depended less on talent, but on financial origin. The public funds can not pay for educational opportunities alone. Therefore the fulfillment of this social task should be co-financed by the mobilization of private capital. Social Impact Investments, which also include private education funding, are one option.
Even without study fees, an average of 29,000 euros of living expenses must be spent on a three-year Bachelor's degree. Especially for graduates of economics, many employers demand that they have already gained foreign experience during their studies. For this the students need additional money. However, the state-funded study funding BAföG received only about 18 percent of the students, an average of 435 Euro per month – about half of the actual cost of living. Scholarships account for just four per cent of the students, as the 21st Social Exclusion of the German Student Union showed.
Due to the strictly trained bachelor's and master's system, there is little time left to work alongside. Anyone who does it anyway risks his study success. Parents remain the most important source of funding for students. Well, he who has some who can pay – bad for those whose parents can give little or nothing for their studies.
As before, the origin determines decisively whether and how successfully a student can study. For many years, the Deutsches Studentenwerk has continued to determine the following distribution: 77 percent of the study population of a birth year study when one of their parents has an academic degree. If none of the parents has an academic degree, the probability that a student is studying is only 23 percent. In the OECD comparison, Germany is one of the closing lights of educational opportunities. This is dangerous for a country that has only a few important raw materials.
Academics are paying back funding later with interest rates
Students to finance the training regardless of their origin is the business model of Deutsche Bildung AG. Private and institutional investors provide money through their study fund – either as equity in the form of limited partnerships in the study fund or in the form of bonds. In the meantime, the Deutsche Bildungs-Studienfonds, market leader in this segment, has provided 42 million euros and has already promoted more than 3,000 young academics.
It is important to flexibly adapt the financial support to the students' needs and to combine them with a content-related promotion. Professional training and coaching-
Programs, such as WissenPlus by Deutsche Bildung, are designed to unfold the individual potential of the individual. The better the student develops, the higher the probability that he will successfully enter the career and pay back a portion of his income to the study fund.
By investing in a study fund, investors not only contribute to educational opportunities, but also achieve a financial return. At the same time, an academic education for the individual means a significant increase in his personal income. For example, the current Ifo study, "Education Pays Off," commissioned by Union Investment, notes that academics are earning up to 64 percent more towards non-academics. Good education does not only cost a lot, it also benefits.

short CV
Andreas Schölzel Member of the Board of Deutsche Bildung AG
Schölzel was Executive Director at Goldman Sachs International and Citigroup Global Markets in London and Germany. since
December 2016, he is a member of the Board of German Education and is responsible for the investment process, portfolio management and the acquisition of new investors. In this context, he also directs the counseling team of the German education, which selects the subsidized students and supervises during the payment processes.Images: Cherries / Shutterstock.com, istockphoto_stokkete